95 105 The Embrace of God (Deut 33)

I'm very glad to have you all with us on the final Sunday of this year. It's going to be a special Sunday morning, followed by an equally special evening. But let's put the service in which we're going to be thinking particularly about our security in God.

Let's put it into context as we sing the prayer that Jesus taught us, our Father. And if you remain standing, my good friend Sue is going to lead us in a traditional hymn and also another song. Let's stand now.

O come all ye faithful joyful and triumphant, O'er the land of the free and the home of For thine is the kingdom, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. gone astray. Father, we offer this service to you.

Come and own our praise. and we ask that you will meet us at the point of our need and forgive us our sins and assure us again of the divine embrace as we leave an old year and move towards the new. Lord we thank you for all your goodnesses.

Help us as we turn to a hymn of praise to express our hearts gratitude with all sincerity for your faithfulness. Amen. Oh Father we look back on the last year with praise for your faithfulness and regret some of us for our folly.

We ask that all that was good may be preserved and be a seed that multiplies and all that was wrong may be still born and die and we commit this ongoing year to you as individuals, some of us as members of families, all of us as part of some church fellowship. Take us and may we know the realization of the precious promise from your word selected for us this coming year. May we know it in all its fullness.

Our reading this morning comes from Deuteronomy 33 verses 1 to 5 and then 26 to 29. This is the blessing that Moses the man of God pronounced on the Israelites before his death. He said the Lord came from Sinai and dawned over them from Seir.

He shone forth from Mount Paran. He came with myriads of holy ones from the south from his mountain slopes. Surely it is you who love the people.

All the holy ones are in your hand. At your feet they all bow down and from you receive instruction. The law that Moses gave us, the possession of the assembly of Jacob.

He was king over Jeshurun when the leaders of the people assembled along with the tribes of Israel. Verse 26. There is no one like the God of Jeshurun who rides on the heavens to help you and on the clouds in his majesty.

The eternal God is your refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms. He will drive out your enemy before you saying destroy him. So Israel will live in safety alone.

Jacob's spring is secure in a land of grain and new wine where the heavens drop dew. Blessed are you O Israel who is like you, a people saved by the Lord. He is your shield and helper and your glorious sword.

Your enemies will cower before you and you will trample down their high places. When I was praying for the Lord's guidance for a text that would help and encourage our church family for this coming year, I had already considered this text when that day I opened a book given to me by George Verwer, Seasons of the Lord, by Herbert Lockyer. And it just, as I took it out, fell open to the page that was entitled, Underneath are the Everlasting Arms.

I felt then that it was the confirmation the Lord was giving to us for this year, for the motto text. I will just read a small amount of this out of the book, not too much, but a small amount of it. The arms around and underneath us are the everlasting arms of the eternal God and are therefore well able to support and protect us at all times.

Think of the double consolation there is for our hearts in the glorious promise, the eternal God is thy dwelling place. Our native environment is not earth or time, but heaven and eternity. We are assured that the everlasting arms of our eternal God are underneath us, ever there to save us from falling, no matter how deep our distress and affliction may be.

Underneath are the arms that never flag or lose their strength, embracing and consoling us. Thus sustained, all Satan's efforts to harm us avail nothing. Anne gave her testimony at the tab a little while ago, it was an evening service, and I wanted her to share another facet of it, because it's one thing to preach from these texts, it's another thing to know the experience of them.

So I've asked Anne just to share. This morning when I was praying again about what I wanted to say, the Lord had a verse on my heart that goes very much along the lines of the motto text. I'll just leave it and read it, it's from the message.

It's good to root our, I find for myself, I'm sure for all of us, it's good to root our experience in the Word of God, because if we do otherwise we get on shaky ground, don't we? And what I will be sharing is very experiential, but I want to assure you it's rooted on the sound truth of the Word of God, and that's why it's worked for me. It's in John 10. Jesus was answering a rather difficult question.

Teacher, which command in God's law is the most important? Jesus said, love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence. This is the most important, the first on any list, but there is a second to set alongside it. Love others as well as you love yourself.

These two commands are pegs. Everything in God's law and the prophets hangs from them. When I was praying, the Lord laid on my heart these last couple weeks about relationship, and those everlasting arms are rooted in a relationship with that eternal God.

I'd like to just share with you some of what he's been doing with me concerning relationships, if I may. All our lives are very caught up and bound up in all sorts of relationships, aren't they? There's our relationship with God, there's our relationship with ourselves, and there's our relationship with others. I came into a relationship with God initially when I was 16 years old.

I was in a very difficult domestic situation at home. I had two parents who were alcoholics. My dad had severe sexual problems, which only came to light later on, but they were going on at that time.

Very unstable background. It was a sort of situation where, forgive me if I repeat this for those who heard before, but I feel it's very important, where you could come downstairs and say one thing one day and get one reaction. The next day, you could do exactly the same thing, get another.

There was no security. I was the youngest of three, very much like an only child for the others were sort of often away by the time I was five or six. And so there wasn't anybody else to sort of hang on to for security in the situation.

I had to cope as best I could. And I learned very quickly how to cope was to keep your mouth shut. Don't ever admit how you're feeling.

Try to please everybody all the time, particularly my mother. And that's how I coped. It got me through.

But when I was 16, I was beginning to search. I thought there's bound to be more to life than this. My parents by that time were quite well off financially, emotionally and spiritually bereft, but quite financially well off.

And I knew the answer wasn't in money. Educationally, my father was quite high up. He was also in local politics.

Very well respected man in the community. Isn't this often the case, by the way? I mean, what goes on behind closed doors? None of us know what's really happening in people's lives, do we? But anyway, I remember one day saying, God, if you were there, show me. And he did.

Within a matter of weeks, I came in touch with a Christian young people's group and had a very real conversion experience. True to my personality. In, bang, wallop, let's go in all together.

You know, 100%. I was ready to sort of drown everybody in living water. I was ready to convert any teacher, friend, anybody I could talk to, I would tell them how Jesus had come into my life and changed it.

But as I went on in my Christian life, in my 20s, the emotional needs that had always been there from way back, I couldn't sit on them any longer. I began to have chronic depression, bouts of depression, which would get deeper and deeper and closer and closer together. So by the time Ian and I were married, it was well and truly into that pattern.

There was also an eating disorder beginning to come out into the open, which I'd hid quite successfully, not from him. I was open with him when we married. But it was the sort of thing where I would eat and eat and eat and eat and eat and eat.

And I could put on 30 pounds in a couple of weeks, three weeks easily. So that's the kind of extent of it. It wasn't normal behavior.

It wasn't normal pick a biscuit here or there. It was pretty awful. Almost bizarre, really.

As I went on, this began to develop even more. And as I say, the lows got lower and the gaps got shorter. So my relationship with God wasn't, so I could see, it wasn't meeting the need.

Those problems were there. And I didn't try to run out of my relationship with God, but it wasn't meeting my deep need at that time. And as I said, into my 20s and 30s, it got worse and worse and worse.

My relationship with myself was also pretty bad. I hated myself. And as the pattern increased, I hated myself more.

Of course, you don't admit that to anybody. You try and put on a good front, don't you? And it can even come out as quite arrogant, sort of outward, kind of relating to people. But I really hated myself.

I'd go into a room and I was convinced, you know, you, well, almost paranoid. You'd go in and expect everybody to hate you. It was difficult to have any kind of confidence in relationships with other people.

I was friendly on the outside. In my good times, I could be rather bubbly and kind and all the rest of it. But underneath, there was a desperately insecure woman, not really able to trust in any relationship.

And that goes right on down from my husband on down. It obviously affected our family life. As the children came along, in a good period, I would think, oh, great, it's over.

And then it would come again. And so they had a pretty unstable situation to deal with as well. By the time I got into my mid-30s, I hit really an all-time low.

I resisted quite consistently going on medication, doing all this. I kept thinking there must be an answer. I'm not saying there isn't a place for medication.

I'm not against it as such. But I just kept thinking, I don't want to mirror these symptoms. I want to get through.

I want to find the answer. There's got to be an answer somewhere. And although I would get very angry with God and angry with other people, angry with Christians, angry with myself, there was something in my heart, and I believe God put it there, which wasn't going to give up, which was going to keep looking, keep seeking.

I did an interesting thing over the weekend. I used to keep journals at that time. There's like a whole stack in one of the drawers.

Some of them were so bad, I chucked them out. I don't mean this time, but before, so black. But I read through quite a lot of the last few years and was reading a bit aloud to Ian, and we were amazed.

You forget what it was like. In one sense, you never forget, but you forget how black it was. You forget how deep down you were.

You forget the prayers you've prayed. I forgot the prayers I prayed from my heart would write them down, the words God would give me in the blackest time. It was so wonderful to read those and see what God has answered, what he's done.

But as I said, about five years ago, in the winter of 1990, I reached an all-time low. I was very suicidal. It was about November of that time.

I was very ready to walk out on our marriage, on the children. I didn't feel I could cope anymore. We were in a church situation, which was very difficult.

Their answer to emotional problems was basically to shame people into repentance, as they saw it. So the more shame I was faced with, the worse I got. Everything seemed to be working against me.

Relationships I'd cut off from most of my friends at that time because I couldn't cope. I couldn't cope with them seeing what I was really like. So I would just retreat and hide like a little mole in a hole.

I coped barely, cooking meals just barely. Children were looked after just barely. Routine was kept, but just barely.

Inside, I felt like somebody was breaking up inside. I felt that close to a complete crack-up. I remember calling upon the Lord and saying, Why? What? What can we do? What's happening? What can I do? I'll read you something that he told me at that time.

I remember Tony preaching some months ago on God's mercy, by the way. I think he said something like, when you're down in the depths, don't think that the people down in the depths don't hear God. Sometimes they hear them more than the people up in the heights.

God was very merciful to me down in the depths. Often he would speak to me out of the blue, and I would record it and write it down. He was actually, I think, nearer in some ways in those deeps than in the good times, doing things that at that time I didn't really understand.

It's quite personal, so I'm trusting you with this. This was written in December 1990. This is what I believe the Lord was saying to me.

As I said, I know it's very experiential, but if you listen, it's very rooted in the truth of Scripture, as real prophecy or anything usually is. As your earthly father conceived you and was aware of you in pregnancy and following, so how much more was I your heavenly father? Do not pattern me and my involvement after your father. I was totally involved.

I knew every detail of your birth and conception. You were conceived in suffering, and I felt the suffering. I learned later of some very bad circumstances my parents were in when I was born that I didn't know about at the time when I wrote this.

There were lots of things that I learned about later that verified this. You were conceived in suffering, and I felt the suffering. I saw the void in your child's heart and want to fill it.

I have always wanted you to be with me. Respond to my love and let me fill the void that compulsive eating never has. I'm able to reveal and satisfy in your peculiar needs.

Do not fear, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you shall find rest for your soul. Trust in me. Come on in me.

Let go of old fears and misconceptions. I shall reveal the truth, and you shall live free. That was December that year.

Later on in April, and this is particularly precious to me, and I believe God has really outworked this in my life. You eat to satisfy hunger. This is one day when I said, Lord, why do I do this? Why is this behavior? Why has it got a hold of me? Because I was utterly bound.

It's no good saying to people that have an addiction or a problem like that, snap out of it, stop doing it. If you want to stop, you can. They can't.

You eat to satisfy hunger, real or imaginary, true or deceptive in origin. I am the only one who can satisfy your hunger. My power will and is operating in your life to that end.

Trust in me and my faithfulness, not what I could do, not my striving, not my big ideas, or even my responsiveness to God's word. I will do it. Your testimony will be complete.

You will be a source of my help to others. Many suffer as you have suffered. This has come back to me many times.

There are many hells on earth in the depths of people's souls. I went into hell to proclaim the gospel, freedom to the captives. I will go into your hell by my spirit in order to proclaim my freedom there.

Walk quietly on with me. Trust in me. I am gentle and lowly of heart.

There's that word again. And you shall find rest for your soul. Look to me.

I am not a man, although I choose often to minister through men. Look to me and be thankful. What I have started, I shall complete.

Over the last five years, I believe God really has outworked this in my life in a very deep way. And that first passage I read, he's given me that love for God that's passionate. He showed me how much I love him.

He's brought me to a place where I can love myself as I love others. He's put love in my heart for other people that wasn't there before. He's put a softness and a new thing deep down that he never could have done apart from that pain and that long-term thing.

I'm talking about 20 years of repetitive chronic depression and eating disorder. And I find, as we were talking earlier, that he has worked good in it. It wasn't good.

I wasn't good. The thing itself was horrible, black, evil, destructive, and all the rest of it. But God was good, is good.

And through my relationship with him, he's been working out those good things that I believe I wouldn't be where I am today in God and I wouldn't have that deep-down security if it hadn't been tested and broken up like that and had to be put back together. So I find that I'm really actually able to thank him for something that is pretty awful because he has done that good thing in it. Those are the everlasting arms.

Well, let's have a look at that text, shall we, that was precious to Barbara. And it's my prayer that this may be a prophetic verse of Scripture. The Word of God is generally, of course, always applicable, but there are times when the logos becomes rima.

That's a Greek term that means the word becomes particularly applicable to an individual and to a congregation as a whole. So we pray that the logos may be rima for us as we look at this precious promise which many of you have received from us in terms of a beautifully drawn motto card. We trust that you'll put it somewhere prominent in your home, that it may be an inspiration to you, maybe as you look on your kitchen wall or wherever it is that you've conveniently put it.

If you've got your Bible open, we're on Deuteronomy 33, verse 27. Come and read it with me. Deuteronomy 33, 27, just the first two lines.

Let's read together. The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms. And again, the eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.

Campbell Morgan, a great preacher in London in the 20s and 30s, speaking on this verse says of it that here is the faith that cancels fear, the faith that cancels fear. And Morgan went on to say there are two fears, the fear of the unknown future, the fear of the unfathomable present, and I want to add another, the fear of the unforgettable past. Three fears, the unknown future, the unfathomable present, and the fear of the unforgettable past.

Reverend Eric Land was my gifted predecessor in this pulpit for many years. I spoke to him shortly before his death. In fact, I spoke to him on many an occasion, but one conversation is at the forefront of my mind at the moment.

We were talking about the hour of departure, and he said, you know, I'd be okay if only my family are around me at the time. I think in God's grace that was his experience, as his close-knit family gave him support in that tremendous final hour. Now, when a man comes to the end, it's worth listening to what he has to say, or in the case of a lady, what she has to say.

And here is Moses, who has been pastor of Israel, of the Hebrew community, for 940 years, and he is, in effect, singing his Nunc Dimittis, his departure song. Look at the first verse at the beginning of this chapter. This is a blessing that Moses, the man of God, pronounced on the Hebrews before his death.

And he's got gathered around him representatives of the large congregation, and as he winds up the blessings that he gives to individual tribes, as he summarizes it all for the whole community, he does so in the words of our motto text, which speaks about God being underneath us, having already told us in the 26th verse that God is above us. He rides on the heavens to help you. And if you take the context of the following verses, he argues that God is around you.

So you've got the whole idea, which presumably triggered off Charles Wesley's great hymn about the love of God, underneath me, round about me, is the current of his love. One of the most sensational things I ever saw, and many of you here would have witnessed it, was many years ago now when Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon. But actually, he took with him a bit of earth.

Had he not, then he wouldn't have lasted more than one step on the moon. Around him, in a capsule, was oxygen. And there is a sense in which God, through Moses, is saying to the Hebrews, as you move into your promised land, the only thing that you can depend upon for your success will be to know the enveloping of my love.

Underneath you, round about you, the arms of God. This gives Morgan the right to say of my verse, it contains the faith that cancels fear. It seems to me that the best way to expound this text, however, is to bring alongside it a very well-known, perhaps the most popular parable that our Lord Jesus related.

And that was of a son who was divorced from a fractured relationship with his father. I refer to that story of the prodigal son. And when he returns home, he discovers that his father still loves him.

So with that as our backcloth to help us in our category of interpretation, then let's look specifically at this verse. And the divine embrace which it holds out. Who will embrace us? The eternal God.

Thou hast no youth, great God, and unbeginning end thou art. Thy glory in itself abode and still abides in its own tranquil heart. No age can heap its outward years on thee.

Dear God, thou art thine own. Eternity. He is the eternal God.

And he makes himself known in the category of a father. The father of all mercies. The God of all comfort.

You see, the only hope that lad had as he made his way back to the familiar territory where he had been brought up as a youngster was that dad would still be loving. And the only hope that you and I have as we move in this troubled world towards the future is that God, the eternal God, might be loving towards us. Oh God, our help in ages past.

Our hope for years to come. Now one of the things about God which is unique is his consistency. You cannot say that about yourself.

I cannot say that about myself. But God is the same from everlasting to everlasting. The Hebrew is not easy to put into English.

Perhaps the translators would have been better at giving us a couple of words. The idea of everlasting is from a vanishing point to a vanishing point. It's very difficult for you to grasp just what is meant by the word eternal.

Try a little exercise I plucked from A.W. Tozer. Think in terms of creation. Now think away England.

It no longer exists as a separate island on its own, the United Kingdom. Think away Europe. Think away the sea.

Think away the earth. Think away the sun, the moon, the stars, the planets. Think away this universe.

Think away the many universes that are behind the whole cosmic scene. And then you still have God, majestic, alone, complete, fulfilled, Elohim, the triune God, the eternal God who never changes. And within that character of the eternal God, there is paternity, which means to say that you get an insight into what He is like when you see the picture of Father rushing down the hill towards the prodigal.

That is an illustration of the everlasting God, the eternal God. What? Well, your refuge. He calls you into his company for what? So that you can find there the safety that perhaps you have not had heretofore.

There was nowhere else for the prodigal to go, was there? I mean, there he is in that distant country. He is a disgrace to his family. He is a ruin as far as he himself is concerned.

My favorite quotation from Abraham Lincoln, which I have used several times here at the tab is, Sometimes I fall upon my knees because I have nowhere else to go. The eternal God and His embrace, that is our refuge. Outside of that, there really is nothing to hold us as we make our way into the next year, let alone as we make our way into the next millennium.

I did a check of the word refuge last night. This is one of the miracles, the marvels of computers, isn't it? You feed into your program a word from a Bible lexicon and within a matter of seconds you've got it. Ninety-three times the word refuge occurs.

Forty-three times it occurs in the book of Psalms. And whenever the psalmist makes reference to the word refuge, it's always in terms of going to God, finding strength in Him, finding cover, finding safety, finding security. You get that anticipated also when Ruth comes back as a refugee to the land of Israel.

She has been before Amor Bites and she becomes a member of the Hebrew community. And one man who will deal kindly with her says of Ruth, you have come to trust, to find shelter under the wings of the Lord God of Israel. In Him you have discovered a refuge.

So here in my verse, there is a reference to the eternal God. And the eternal God doing what? Well, the eternal God indicating that He is our refuge. How do we know? Well, because of those everlasting arms.

The eternal God is your refuge outstretched towards you are His arms. Were you present the other Sunday when little Henry Milne took over? I mean, it was an interview, but he was a star performer. And he indicated to me what he was expecting for Christmas and was surprised what he had to say to his parents because they hadn't got a clue.

He was freewheeling. I thought this was all that he told them before, but he was making it up on the spot. Now, Henry and I have got quite a good relationship.

I love that little lad and his brother. And just a few days earlier, I'd been with his mom. I called in at their home.

It was around 8 o'clock. And, well, Henry should have been in bed, but he heard my voice and he came downstairs. Well, that's not quite true.

He didn't get to the bottom stair. He stayed on the eighth, and then he just catapulted himself straight across at me. And, of course, I caught him.

Well, that was exciting, but the second run is always more exciting than the third run. And it would have continued all night had his mom not stopped him. Now, how come that he will hurl himself at me when I'm at the bottom of the stairs and he's really halfway up? And the answer is, well, because he has confidence in this visitor who, at that moment, had called unexpectedly.

He threw himself, anticipating the arms outstretched and the clutch and the embrace. And this is precisely what my text says here. The eternal God.

Who? The eternal Father. What? Well, he will be my refuge. How? By opening his arms.

The arms of his love. I have loved thee with an everlasting love. Therefore, with loving kindness have I drawn thee.

With the arms of his power. Our Lord God, thou hast made the heavens and the earth by thy great power and thy outstretched arms. The arms of his love, of his power.

Hey, the arms of his salvation. For when God came on earth, thirty-two years later, they pinned his arms to a cross. But they were not forcefully opened because there is a sense in which our Lord, both spiritually and also physically, opened his arms time and time again.

Come unto me, all you that labor and are heavy laden. It's Jesus who picks up the little child and clutches the child to his breast. It's our Lord Jesus who says, come to me, you who are broken, you who are dispirited, you who have failed.

Come to me, my arms always outstretched. Whatever dizzy height you may have found yourself in, I tell you this. You have never got to an altitude where it is suicidal for you to jump into the arms of your God.

He never misses when the wanderer comes back. As with the prodigal, the father had his eye on that son before the son ever saw the father. And it's the case with God.

He never slumbers. He never sleeps. The eternal God is what? He is your refuge.

How do you know? His arms, they're wide open. You know, being a pastor you learn a thing or two about infants. Especially being one of the pastors of the tab here because I think we broke all records these last couple of years with the number of dedications.

Now, there are three things, at least two things you have to know about a dedication. One, the name of the baby. You just hope you don't get a state of mental amnesia at the vital moment and give the lad or the lass a name that the parent never anticipated.

It hasn't happened yet, but the possibility is always there. The second thing that you need to know is where to hold the child. I mean, if there's no support under the nape of his neck, then his head becomes something like a freewheeling football moving off out of play.

And if there's no support under his little or her little bottom, then again, man doesn't really appreciate the child being lifted by the nape of the neck and displayed around the congregation. You have to support the child at its weakest spots, underneath the seat, by the nape of the neck and clutch it to you. The eternal God is our refuge and underneath, at the weakest point, by your seat, so to speak, by your neck, He has you.

The place of mysterious assault, that's how Spurgeon expounds the term underneath. It's from the depths of the earth that sometimes it appears that the devil comes with all his darts, with all his temptations. But you can never sink so low and not find that the arms of God are even lower.

Jonah is in the belly of the fish. He fathoms down. And yet, from the horror of that experience, he discovers that the arms of God are still there.

Though I took the wings of the morning, though I descended into the very belly of the earth, even there your spirit would find me. Even in the depths, the depths of your failure, the depths of your brokenness, I'll astonish you. Even in hell, God extends His sovereignty underneath the everlasting arms.

For the Hebrews, the weakness was the present pilgrimage, the fiery scorpions, the heat of the desert, the problems of always nostalgically looking back to Egypt. But however broken the Hebrews became, their God remained utterly faithful underneath, underneath. For what reason? Well, for your preservation.

You see, He is going to preserve you. Oh yes, you're getting older, and for some of you your eyes are dimmer, and your hearing is duller. But He still has His hand upon you.

His love in times past forbids you to think. He'd leave you at last in trouble to sink. You see, this is the eternal God who has paternal instincts.

He has His hand on you. Your body is dissolving in terms of health and strength. It's not what it used to be, the outward man perishing.

But inward, the inward man, ever day by day, He promises to succor you, to bring you that relief, the necessary supplies in order for you to continue. Underneath, round about, the everlasting arms. Well, if that is the who, the eternal God, and the what is your refuge, and the how is the everlasting arms, and the where is underneath me, what about the when? The eternal God is now.

Moses, take off your shoes from your feet. You're on holy ground. Go to Egypt and tell the Hebrews that you are going to release them from slavery and return them back to the promised land.

How do I know and how shall I convince them that it is you who has sent me? What's your name? And the divine name is disclosed to Moses. I am that I am. You see, there's a sense in which the past and the future don't apply to God.

He is ever the present reality, Jesus Christ, the same. And this promise, valid for Israel of old, valid for the apostolic church, valid for you now, today, the eternal God is your refuge. Please turn to side two for the continuation of the message.